


Unmitigated

by Taricha



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, First Time, M/M, Multi, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:03:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taricha/pseuds/Taricha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every cell inside his brain was telling him to step back and cool off, let this go like he'd let go of everything else - every touch, every look, every word that had raised his hopes just the slightest before crushing them completely. The teenage girl inside his brain was screaming otherwise, with pom-poms and a full array of pornographic possibilities. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't the brain cells that were winning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unmitigated

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lukadreaming for looking over this for me!

Connor's face was not what Becker expected to see when he opened his front door at 9:00 am on a Sunday morning but there he was anyway, pale with considerable stubble adorning his jawline. Becker frowned. "How'd you know where my flat was?"

Connor raised an eyebrow. "That's it? Not, hey there Connor, good morning mate, how are you?"

Becker continued to scowl, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms over his chest to add to the effect. It was cold outside and he'd been asleep when the doorbell rang. The pyjama bottoms that he was wearing didn't do much to help keep him warm. He could feel goosebumps prick up all over his skin at the breeze.

"Uh, fine," Connor said, and his shoulders slumped as what little fight he'd had went out of him. "Listen, Becker, I need some advice. Like, really, really need some advice."

"So call your mum," Becker snapped, then folded, opening the door. "Fine, fine, come in." He always folded when it came to Connor or Abby. It was pathetic, really.

"I'm sorry if I woke you," Connor mumbled, stepping only a few feet into the hall, seeming reluctant to go any further.

Becker rolled his eyes and lied. "You didn't."

Connor frowned, and waved a hand in Becker's direction. "Well, then, why are you all..."

Becker ignored the question, turning on his heel and going to sit down on the sofa. "What sort of advice do you need, Connor?" he asked blandly, trying not to be curious. Though Connor and Abby had been back for several weeks now he had to swallow the incessant questions that welled up in his throat on a daily basis, not wanting to pry, not wanting to break apart the fragile domesticity they seemed to have finally found. He found himself constantly fighting the urge to hug them, to touch them and make sure they were real. Really, really pathetic, that's what he was.

Connor was still in the hall, looking hesitant. Becker patted the sofa beside him, struggling to disguise his curiosity as irritation."Come on sit down, take your boots off. If you went to all the work of finding my address it must be important."

"Didn't take a lot of work, actually," Connor said, but he did take his shoes off and perch awkwardly at the opposite end of the sofa, his back rigid and his legs tense. "Erm, nice place, Becker."

Becker looked around at the flat. He'd moved here a few months back, and had chosen it for location rather than aesthetics. The walls were barren and white, and the furniture was mismatched and made mostly of plastic stacking boxes. The sofa was the nicest piece of furniture he owned, an old brown leather thing that he'd inherited from his cousin. "Thanks," he said wryly.

Connor smiled weakly. "Right," he said, clearing his throat and tugging the scarf away from his neck. "So. Um. Abby. Abby and I, we," he sighed and buried his head in his hands.

Alarms went off inside Becker's skull and he leaned over, putting a hand on Connor's shoulder, suddenly very worried that Connor was going to start crying. "Hey, it's all right." he said gruffly, patting the other man. This was not part of his skill set, it really wasn't.

"This is just so embarrassing," Connor mumbled into his mittens. "I mean, you..." he waved a hand erratically in Becker's direction, then sank down into the sofa, laying his head against the back of the couch. Becker was relieved to see his eyes were dry, but felt otherwise completely confused.

"You're going to have to use your words, Connor," Becker prodded, bemused.

Connor squeezed his eyes shut and sprayed out a random flurry of words, like he thought that spitting them out faster would make it less embarrassing to say them.

"Oh. Hang on, really? After all that time in the Cretaceous?" Becker said, taken aback.

Connor nodded, his eyes still shut and his cheeks flaming red. "No condoms."

Becker frowned, pulling back to his side of the sofa. "Well, couldn't you just have, you know..." he made a meaningless sexually-themed hand gesture, "pulled out?"

Connor's eyes snapped open and he rolled his head to look at Becker. "Do you know how many of Abby's friends got pregnant in school from that? I suggested it, just once, and she nearly didn't talk to me for a week."

Becker nodded in what he hoped was a thoughtful, reassuring way. "So why haven't you two," again with the incomprehensible and poorly formed lewd hand gestures - it was like he couldn't stop himself, "since you've been back?"

Connor's eyebrows came together and his lips pursed, and he said in the manner of someone sick with desperate irritation: "Jess."

Becker snorted. "I can see how she might kill the romance a bit."

Connor sighed. "You have no idea. But she's going away for the night to her mum's house, and so Abby and I will have the flat to ourselves."

"And you want... tips? I didn't know you were a virgin, Connor."

"I'm not!" Connor said, sitting up and looking indignant. "Why does everyone always say that?"

"Because you come to their flat and ask for sex advice?"

Connor let out a huffed breath. "I'm not asking for sex advice. I'm asking for, you know, romantic advice. Like, date ideas, I suppose?"

Becker bit his lip to keep in the laughter. "And you came to me?"

"Well, yeah." Connor looked puzzled.

Becker raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "You should talk to Lyle. I'm not much good with the, uh, romantic stuff. I'm a bit out of practice."

Connor frowned. "Really? How?"

Becker's cheeks heated up and he spoke in a slow, deliberate drawl, hoping that Connor would drop the subject. "Well, Connor, I'm very busy saving your life as you attempt to throw it directly in harm's way. I don't exactly have time to go cruising in bars."

Naturally Connor didn't, instead choosing to look completely astonished and pursue it like a dog after a bone. "Well, can't you just see someone from work? What about Jess, she likes you. She's always nattering on about you, anyway."

Becker pulled a face and then felt immediately terrible about it. "Jess is a nice girl, but just a girl."

"There's nobody at work that you fancy?"

Of course there was, but Becker had been sitting on that secret for far too long to let it burst out of him now. "It's inappropriate to have a romantic relationship with people you work with," he said stiffly, though he didn't mean Connor and Abby, of course. It was fine for them, they were civilians. Any person who thought it was more important to save a dinosaur than protect their own safety wouldn't have their hierarchy of priorities compromised by layers of emotional baggage, primarily because there wasn't actually any way their priorities could be more ridiculous at that point.

Connor's face cleared up and a grin spread across it. "You do!" he said triumphantly, sitting upright on the sofa and practically bouncing in place. "Oh come on, Becker, mate, you can tell me! Who knows, maybe I'll be able to find out if she fancies you back!"

Connor was sitting there, his eyes bright and his smile genuine and cheerful, Becker was hard pressed not to just push him back into the sofa and destroy all of his working relationships in one fell swoop. His emotions felt out of control lately, swinging wildly towards drama and behaviour that was so utterly unlike him he felt embarrassed even thinking about it. "Absolutely not," Becker said, responding to a variety of questions and demands, both Connor's and his own. He was a man, a military man. He wouldn't behave like some romance-novel-reading teenage girl.

Connor's enthusiasm wasn't dampened. "You know if you don't tell me, I'll just find out, right? I'm like a detective, you can't keep this from me. Best spill it now, mate!"

"Didn't you come here for advice about Abby?"

"Well that was before, when I thought you were some sort of Casanova. Now that I know you're just a shy little girl, I think I'll work something out for myself thanks."

The surge of jealousy in his stomach was unanticipated, and he didn't even know who it was directed at. Both of them, probably, that they'd found happiness in each other and left him alone. "Shut it," he said weakly, crossing his arms over his chest and trying not to blush. He'd always hated his cheeks, how quickly they flamed and gave him away no matter how straight his face.

Connor's face had no such filter, and he was looking at Becker with such unmitigated glee that it was all Becker could do to not lean over and kiss the expression, feel the smugness against his mouth. Connor had always brought out this sort of stupidity in him, his enthusiasm more than infectious, giving him hot flashes and reducing him to a nonsensical carousel of thought revolving around how badly he'd like to taste that joy. It was fucking irritating - he was a Captain, control ought to be easier than this to attain, and more difficult to remove.

"So, tell me about her," Connor said, tucking his hands under his chin and looking at Becker with all the intensity of a kitten waiting for a bug to make the first move. "How'd you two meet?"

"I am not - I don't fancy anybody at work."At least Connor hadn't noticed, Becker told himself, that had to be some sort of victory. Even if he felt like he was in constant emotional turmoil, at the very least it didn't show. Somehow, that didn't feel as vindicating as it should have. Becker walked into the kitchen, grabbing randomly at something in the fridge to give himself an excuse for the move.

"Is it that girl in the special forces, what's her name, Lucy or something?" Connor had apparently taken his stalking off as an indication that the conversation was to be carried on in the kitchen, rather than dropped completely. "She's quite fit, isn't she? I bet Matt could put in a good word for you, they're always talking about guns and stuff."

Becker struggled not to grind his teeth. "Connor, it's like you're not even listening to me."

"What, I'm completely listening!" He sounded outraged. Becker didn't look over, searching instead for a frying pan. "My ears are 100% perked in your direction, mate! Lay it on me!"

"Stop calling me mate," Becker growled, cracking eggs into the pan with more force than strictly necessary.

"Well all right.... pal."

Becker turned, fully intending on ending the conversation and pushing Connor out of the door. Connor was smiling, but his eyes weren't twinkling and his hands were in his pocket. Connor never put his hands in his pocket when he was happy about something. Excitement made Connor's hands dance about in the air like demented birds, more expressing enthusiasm than adding to the story. A sunny, cheerful Connor was frequently knocking glasses off tables with his waving, erratic arms, not sitting there with his shoulders hunched high and his fingers mining for lint.

"You can tell me," Connor insisted. "I want to help!"

"You really want to know?" Becker stepped closer until he was well within the limits of Connor's personal space. Every cell inside his brain was telling him to step back and cool off, let this go like he'd let go of everything else - every touch, every look, every word that had raised his hopes just the slightest before crushing them completely. The teenage girl inside his brain was screaming otherwise, with pom-poms and a full array of pornographic possibilities. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't the brain cells that were winning.

Connor swallowed, and Becker's gaze danced down to the motion before flicking back up. "Well yeah, we've got to stick together, right ma-, er, pal?"

Becker looked stupidly at Connor, his mouth dry, the skin of his neck prickling as the room shrank and solidified to this moment. This is stupid, he told himself, don't screw this up, you have to work together. He spoke somehow, unsurprised to hear his voice crack. "And what if it's Abby? What if it's you?"

It was a stupid thing to say, more dangerous than it was worth. But he'd been pinning down this crush for too long to let any more opportunities slip by him, and the sudden darkening and dilation of Connor's eyes was the green light Becker had wanted for so long. He stopped holding back. Magnets fell to the floor and shattered the silence as Becker pinned Connor against the fridge and kissed him.

Connor tasted like bacon, a phenomenon that was odd enough that it took a few seconds to process that the licks into his mouth and the hands on his arse meant that Connor was kissing him back. Once that managed to pass into his skull, Becker noticed other things - the breathy sounds Connor was making, the fact that Becker's hands had migrated inside his shirt and that Connor's skin there was smoother than he'd imagined. The thrill that ran up his spine muted his lust, and Becker took his time, exploring Connor's mouth then his neck, kissing and biting the soft skin there, noting every grunt and gasping moan, cataloging it for the future. He felt dizzy, surrounded in the smell of Connor's aftershave, Connor's shampoo. He grinned against Connor's neck but when he pulled back the grin wasn't mirrored.

"Connor?" Becker said, feeling his heart drop into his stomach, the grin slipping off his face and crashing into the floor.

"Abby," Connor said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Becker's chest fluttered and fell, replaced by a numb ache he knew all too well. "Right," he said, stepping back, stepping away. The kitchen air was cold compared to Connor's body heat, misery-making and expanding in the gulf between them.

"She," Connor said.

Becker couldn't bear to look at him, focusing on the floor instead, his fingers floundering and searching for the worktop, struggling to hold himself up as misery pulled him down.

"She," Connor said again, "you'd have to agree. With her, I mean."

"Yeah," Becker said dully, then, "what?"

"I mean," and this time Becker did look up, just in time to see the pale pink flush run across Connor's face, "you'd have to be okay with her there too. With both of us? I mean," Connor's voice picked up speed, turning into a blurred babble of nonsense, "I love her so I, but I also like you and clearly, you know, you're fit, and Abby said so too, and she said she thought that you were, you know, gay, but I said bisexual and you are, right? And we can both have you?"

Becker stared for several long moments as Connor's babble faded off. "Yeah," he said, his voice hoarse. "You can, you can both have me. Hell," he said, not believing his luck, the incredulous nature of this conversation or the fact that they would want him at all, "you can keep me."

This time, when Connor smiled and his face lit up with joy, Becker went ahead and tasted it for himself.


End file.
